Drugs, Drug Targets and You: Patch Clamping

Introduction

To elucidate how an ion channel operates, one needs to examine the factors that influence its opening and closing as well as measure the resulting current flow. For quite some time, the challenges involved in isolating a very small membrane area containing just a few ion channels or a single ion channel and measuring the extraordinarily small ionic currents proved to be insurmountable.

Two cell physiologists, Edwin Neher and Bert Sakmann of the Max Planck Institute (in Göttingen, Germany), succeeded in developing a technique that allowed them to measure the membrane current of a single ion channel. They used a glass microelectrode, called a micropipette, having a diameter of the order of 1 µm. It is said that by accident they placed the electrode very close to the cell membrane so that it came in tight contact with it. The impedance of the measurement circuit then rose to about 50 GΩ (Neher and Sakmann, 1976). The current changes caused by single ion channels of the cell could then be measured by the voltage clamp method. This device came to be known as a patch clamp since it examined the behavior of a "patch" of membrane; it constitutes an excellent "space clamp" configuration.

The patch clamp method was further developed to measure the capacitance of the cell membrane (Neher and Marty, 1982). Since the membrane capacitance is proportional to the membrane surface, an examination of minute changes in membrane surface area became possible. This feature has proven useful in studying secretory processes. Nerve cells, as well as hormone‐producing cells and cells engaged in the host defense (like mast cells), secrete different agents. They are stored in vesicles enclosed by a membrane. When the cell is stimulated, the vesicles move to the cell surface. The cell and vesicle membranes fuse, and the agent is liberated. The mast cell secretes histamine and other agents that give rise to local inflammatory reactions. The cells of the adrenal medulla liberate the stress hormone adrenaline, and the beta cells in the pancreas liberate insulin. Neher elucidated the secretory processes in these cell types through the development of the new technique which records the fusion of the vesicles with the cell membrane. Neher realized that the electric properties of a cell would change if its surface area increased, making it possible to record the actual secretory process. Through further developments of their sophisticated equipment, its high resolution finally permitted recording of individual vesicles fusing with the cell membrane. Neher and Sakmann received the Nobel Prize for their work, in 1991.

Patch Clamp Measurement Techniques

We discuss here the principles of the patch clamp measurement technique (Sakmann and Neher, 1984; Neher and Sakmann, 1992). We do not present the technical details, which can be found in the original literature (Hamill et al. 1981; Sakmann and Neher, 1984).

There are four main methods in which a patch clamp experiment may be performed. These are: 1. Cell‐attached recording 2. Whole cell configuration 3. Outside‐out configuration 4. Inside‐out configuration

These four configurations are further illustrated in Figure 4.27 and discussed in more detail below.

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the four different methods of patch clamp:

(A)cell‐attached recording, (B) whole cell configuration, (C) outside‐out configuration, and (D) inside‐out configuration. (Modified from Hamill et al., 1981.) If a heat‐polished glass microelectrode, called a micropipette, having an opening of about 0.5‐1 µm, is brought into close contact with an enzymatically cleaned cell membrane, it forms a seal on the order of 50 MΩ . Even though this impedance is quite high, within the dimensions of the micropipette the seal is too loose, and the current flowing through the micropipette includes leakage currents which enter around the seal (i.e., which do not flow across the membrane) and which therefore mask the desired (and very small) ion‐channel transmembrane currents. If a slight suction is applied to the micropipette, the seal can be improved by a factor of 100‐1000. The resistance across the seal is then 10‐100 GΩ ("G" denotes "giga" = 109). This tight seal, called gigaseal, reduces the leakage currents to the point where it becomes possible to measure the desired signal ‐ the ionic currents through the membrane within the area of the micropipette.

Cell‐attached recording In the basic form of cell‐attached recording, the micropipette is brought into contact with the cell membrane, and a tight seal is formed by suction with the periphery of the micropipette orifice, as described above. Suction is normally released once the seal has formed, but all micropipette current has been eliminated except that flowing across the delineated membrane patch. As a consequence, the exchange of ions between the inside of the micropipette and the outside can occur only through whatever ion channels lie in the membrane fragment. In view of the small size, only a very few channels may lie in the patch of membrane under observation. When a single ion channel opens, ions move through the channel; these constitute an electric current, since ions are charged particles.

Whole cell recording In the whole cell recording, the cell membrane within the micropipette in the cell‐attached configuration is ruptured with a brief pulse of suction. Now the micropipette becomes directly connected to the inside of the cell while the gigaseal is maintained; hence it excludes leakage currents. In contrast, the electric resistance is in the range of 2‐10 MΩ . In this situation the microelectrode measures the current due to the ion channels of the whole cell. While the gigaseal is preserved, this situation is very similar to a conventional microelectrode penetration. The technique is particularly applicable to small cells in the size range of 5‐20 µm in diameter, and yields good recordings in cells as small as red blood cells.

Outside‐out configuration The outside‐out configuration is a microversion of the whole cell configuration. In this method, after the cell membrane is ruptured with a pulse of suction, the micropipette is pulled away from the cell. During withdrawal, a cytoplasmic bridge surrounded by membrane is first pulled from the cell. This bridge becomes more and more narrow as the separation between pipette and cell increases, until it collapses, leaving behind an intact cell and a small piece of membrane, which is isolated and attached to the end of the micropipette. The result is an attached membrane "patch" in which the former cell exterior is on the outside and the former cell interior faces the inside of the micropipette. With this method the outside of the cell membrane may be exposed to different bathing solutions; therefore, it may be used to investigate the behavior of single ion channels activated by extracellular receptors.

Inside‐out configuration In the inside‐out configuration the micropipette is pulled from the cell‐attached situation without rupturing the membrane with a suction pulse. As in the outside‐out method, during withdrawal, a cytoplasmic bridge surrounded by the membrane is pulled out from the cell. This bridge becomes more and more narrow and finally collapses, forming a closed structure inside the pipette. This vesicle is not suitable for electric measurements. The part of the membrane outside the pipette may, however, be broken with a short exposure to air, and thus the cytoplasmic side of the membrane becomes open to the outside (just the reverse of the outside‐out configuration). Inside‐out patches can also be obtained directly without air exposure if the withdrawal is performed in Ca‐free medium. With this configuration, by changing the ionic concentrations in the bathing solution, one can examine the effect of a quick change in concentration on the cytoplasmic side of the membrane. It can therefore be used to investigate the cytoplasmic regulation of ion channels.

Formation of an outside‐out or inside‐out patch may involve major structural rearrangements of the membrane. The effects of isolation on channel properties have been determined in some cases. It is surprising how minor these artifacts of preparation are for most of the channel types of cell membranes.

Applications of the Patch Clamp Method

From the four patch clamp techniques, the cell‐attached configuration disturbs least the structure and environment of the cell membrane. This method provides a current resolution several orders of magnitude larger than previous current measurement methods. The membrane voltage can be changed without intracellular microelectrodes, and both transmitter‐ and voltage‐activated channels can be studied in their normal ionic environment. Figure 2 shows recording of the electric current of a single ion channel at the neuromuscular endplate of frog muscle fiber.

In the whole cell configuration a conductive pathway of very low resistance as (i.e.,2‐10 MΩ) is formed between the micropipette and the interior of the cell. When the whole‐cell configuration is utilized with large cells, it allows the researcher to measure membrane voltage and current, just as conventional microelectrode methods do. But when it is applied to very small cells, it provides, in addition, the conditions under which high‐quality voltage clamp measurements can be made. Voltage clamp recordings may be accomplished with the whole cell method for cells as small as red blood cells. Many other cell types could be studied for the first time under voltage clamp conditions in this way. Among them are bovine chromaffin cells, sinoatrial node cells isolated from rabbit heart, pancreatic islet cells, cultured neonatal heart cells, and ciliary ganglion cells. A chromaffin cell of 10 µm in diameter can serve to illustrate the electric parameters that may be encountered. This cell has a resting‐state input resistance of several giga‐ohms (GΩ) and active currents of about a few hundred picoamperes (pA). If the electrode has a series resistance RS of about 5 MΩ, that represents a negligible series resistance in the measurement configuration. The membrane capacitance Cm is about 5 pF and thus the time constant τm = RS∙Cm is about 25 µs. Thus a voltage clamp measurement may be performed simply by applying a voltage to the micropipette and measuring the current in the conventional way.

The outside‐out configuration is particularly well suited to those experiments where one wants to examine the ionic channels controlled by externally located receptors. The extracellular solution can be changed easily, allowing testing of effects of different transmitter substances or permeating ions. This configuration has been used to measure the dependence of conductance states of the AChR channel in embryonic cells on the permeating ion. The outside‐out patches have also been used to isolate transmitter‐gated Cl‐channels in the soma membrane of spinal cord neurones, in Aplysia neurones, and in the muscle membrane of Ascaris.

The inside‐out configuration is suitable for experiments where the effects of the intracellular components of the ionic channels are under study. Such control over the composition of solutions on both sides of a membrane has been possible, in the past, only with quite involved techniques. Patch clamp methods with the inside‐out configuration is a simple way to achieve this goal. Most of the studies to date have involved the role of intracellular Ca2+. This configuration has also been used for permeability studies, and for exposing the inner surface of electrically excitable membranes to agents that remove Na+channel inactivation.

Figure 2. Registration of the flow of current through a single ion channel at the neuromuscular endplate of frog muscle fiber with patch clamp method. (From Sakmann and Neher, 1984.)

Adapted from http://www.bem.fi/book/04/04.htm

Patch Clamp Animation Resource: http://sites.sinauer.com/neuroscience5e/animations04.01.html